# biology

Pronunciation: US say "by-AH-luh-jee" /baɪˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/; UK say "by-OL-uh-jee" /baɪˈɒl.ə.d͡ʒɪ/

## Noun

1. The scientific study of life and living matter in all its forms.
   - Simple: The scientific study of living things and how they work.
   - _Biology connects everything from bacteria to blue whales under one field of study._
   - _He switched his major to biology in his second year of college._
2. The structure, function, and behavior of an organism or a particular kind of organism.
   - Simple: The way a living thing is built, how it works, and how it acts.
   - _Scientists study the biology of deep-sea fish to learn how they survive crushing pressure._
   - _Understanding the biology of honeybees explains how a colony finds and shares food._
3. The living organisms found in a particular region or area.
   - Simple: All the living things found in one place or area.
   - _The biology of the coral reef includes thousands of brightly colored species._
   - _Researchers cataloged the biology of the rainforest valley over many years._

## Noun

4. A written history of a person's life. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: A written account of a person's life story.
   - _The historian published a biology of the explorer drawn from old ship logs._
   - _A handwritten biology of the saint survived in the monastery archives._

## Origin

Biology was borrowed from New Latin biologia (1766), which comes from Ancient Greek βίος (bíos, "life") plus -λογία (-logía, "branch of study"). In English it first appears in its modern sense in the work of the physician Thomas Beddoes in 1799.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/biology (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).